Sports
Women Athletes Are Seizing Their Moment
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It used to be that women athletes were exceptions.
In order to exist at all they had to prove they were good enough to be the one woman who could train with the men. They had to sue for opportunities to play. They had to practice in old jerseys and in run-down gyms. They had to work full-time jobs on top of their full-time jobs to pay for the sport that defined them. They had to let the jokes about their bodies and their talent on sitcoms and Saturday Night Live and in school hallways roll off their backs. They had to sneak into men’s only races, or start their own sports leagues, or file lawsuits against federations that paid them less just because of their gender.
But none of the powerhouse athletes in this issue knew a time when women’s sports were nonexistent, or against the rules, or banned altogether. Title IX and the Battle of the Sexes were ancient history by the time they were all joining their first toddler gym classes. Serena and Venus Williams were already household names and the ’99ers had proven that women’s soccer could pack stadiums and make Sports Illustrated covers in time for these girls to hang their posters on their childhood bedroom walls.
Today, all of those exceptions have made way for a generation of women athletes to come pouring through that shattered glass ceiling—and these women are pushing the sports world, and culture in general, forward with abandon.
Just having women athletes to look up to was enough for some of these women to pursue sports themselves. When Suni Lee was 6, she watched clips of the 2008 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team endlessly, then tried to mimic the moves she saw at home. “I started breaking stuff and doing flips on the bed, and finally my mom got sick of it and just put me in gymnastics,” says Lee. Today she has six Olympic medals, including an all-around gold in Tokyo.
Those same ’08 Games are a vivid memory for heptathlete Anna Hall. Since her dad coached track and field, Hall and her sisters gathered around excitedly to watch every event. They saw a young Allyson Felix shine, but another moment caught her attention, too: when Lolo Jones, the favorite for the 100-meter hurdles, clipped a hurdle and lost her lead, missing out on the podium altogether. “I think seeing everyone’s reaction to something bad happening at the Olympics made me realize how big it was,” Hall says.
And that bigness called to her. “That was when I was first like, O.K., this is what I want to do. I’m gonna go there. It just felt really important.” She was only 7 at the time, but this past summer, at 23, Hall made that dream come true in Paris, representing Team USA in the heptathlon.
When Jordan Chiles was first starting in gymnastics, she idolized Shawn Johnson and was told she could be the next Gabby Douglas. Before long, she was competing alongside some of her idols. “I was the youngest national team member, so I was able to see the dedication and passion they brought to the sport,” Chiles says. She has been embraced by the older generation and pushed the new generation forward, as a two-time Olympic medalist with a flair for tattoos and pop music. Her collegiate floor routines have become consistently viral videos, and in March she was named one of Time’s Women of the Year.
While earlier generations of women athletes often had to hide their love for sports or their burgeoning athleticism because even their own families would call it unladylike, Gen Z athletes were often raised by parents who wanted to enjoy sports with their kids. Freestyle skier Eileen Gu’s mom first put her in ski school at Lake Tahoe when she was 3. “Mom really loved to ski, so she would drive four hours away to Tahoe,” says Gu. “And I’m an only child, so she thought ski school was better than babysitting, because I got to be athletic and socialize with other kids.” Her mom gets to ski a lot more now, because she accompanies Gu, 21, around the world while she competes. This year, Gu, who has two Olympic gold medals, added to her haul by capturing her 18th World Cup event, making her the winningest free skier ever—woman or man.
Cameron Brink, the No. 2 pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, knew basketball was a possible career path long before she started playing at age 12. Brink’s mother worked at Nike, bringing in the first era of female basketball players to the brand. “You can feel a shift, when you have those women to look up to,” says the Los Angeles Sparks forward. “Playing basketball for a living is a huge privilege, but none of this would have happened without the women before us.”
As the children of two professional tennis players, Nelly Korda and her two older siblings were encouraged to be athletic. “I started playing sports when I started walking, it’s just always something I’ve done. But our parents didn’t want us to feel like we had to play tennis, they wanted us to find what we were passionate about,” Korda says. It was her older sister Jessica’s interest in golf that got Korda and the rest of the family on the green. “Golf was a game we could all do together. You can be chill and have fun, and then if you are serious it can be intense,” she says. Soon enough, Korda followed in her sister’s footsteps and took golf very seriously, joining the LPGA tour at age 18. Today, she’s the top-ranked women’s golfer in the world.
Becoming an elite athlete wasn’t on Gabby Thomas’s radar as a child. But she was encouraged by her mom to try any sport she wanted: horseback riding, basketball, tennis, gymnastics and soccer. “Sports became a strong part of my identity and shaped who I am,” Thomas says. Ultimately her speed got her a scholarship to Harvard, and ultimately a professional and Olympic career.
Raised in Florida, Caroline Marks was most comfortable in the ocean. She also loved to hang out with her older brothers. So when they learned to surf, she followed. She won her first big trophy at an amateur competition in California. “I just remember getting this big trophy and thinking, This is the best thing ever. I just did what I love to do the most and regardless of where this is going to go, I just never want to stop doing this. Surfing is gonna be a part of my life forever,” she says. So far, the 2024 Olympic gold medalist has continued to find that joy and success on the waves.
Ali Truwit grew up in the water, too. But for her, it was a pool in Connecticut. She was a swim team kid who was constantly surrounded by competitive swimmers, some of whom would become Olympians. “I would always use them as inspiration,” Truwit says. The joy she felt in the water is what kept her training, which ultimately secured her a spot on Yale’s swim team. Just days after her college graduation, though, a shark attacked her and a friend while they were snorkeling and Truwit became a lower-leg amputee. But the empowerment and joy she’d found in the pool helped her embrace her body. “There were all these unknowns about what life without a limb is like, but swimming was such a valuable tool for me, because it was something that I could reclaim,” she says. Just a year after her accident Truwit was competing at the highest level—winning two medals at the 2024 Paralympics.
When Toni Breidinger was a kid in northern California, she tried gymnastics, piano and a bunch of other activities, but nothing really stuck. When her dad saw a billboard on the side of the road in Sonoma advertising a racetrack, he thought he would take Toni and her twin sister, Annie, to try a go-kart class. She was immediately hooked. They raced go-karts until Toni was 15, when she started to get opportunities to try out race cars. The thrill of driving, and winning, kept her moving up through the sport. Today, Breidinger holds the record for the most top-10 finishes in any NASCAR circuit by a woman, with 27.
The women athletes coming up today are fully cognizant of how far the sports world has come, and how far there still is to go toward gender equality.
In the traditionally male-dominated world of professional surfing, Marks got to compete in the first event to offer equal prize money for the men’s and women’s winners, at the 2019 Boost Mobile Pro in Australia. “I used to go out and there used to be hardly any girls just surfing, but now it’s like just as many girls are out there as guys,” she says.
The same thing is happening in other sports, as women’s purses catch up to men’s. But these athletes are anything but content, and it’s about more than money. Korda wants to see women’s golf on prime-time TV. Breidinger is hosting events for girls to get more women drivers to join her in NASCAR—she’s the only one in the Craftsman Truck Series this year, out of 35 drivers. And Truwit hopes the representation for amputee athletes increases with the explosion in coverage of women athletes in general. “The more you see people with differences doing these amazing things, the more you can see yourself in those places, too,” she says. “There’s still so much room to grow.”
Last June, Brink tore her ACL, ending her rookie season early. But undergoing surgery and doing rehab for the better part of a year gave her time to think about the WNBA in a big-picture way. “None of this would have happened without Sheryl Swoopes and all those women who came before. My rookie class, we say the same thing: We want the girls after us to have it even better,” says Brink.
How? Brink has her eye on salary increases and better benefits. And since endorsements are where most players make significant money, she hopes more diverse players get the kind of recognition she and her peers have. “Where are the endorsements for [the vets]?” says Brink. “Especially my teammates that are Black, that are gay, that use they/them pronouns. There’s a privilege that some of the rookies have in being younger and coming in at a good time, and a privilege of looking a certain way. There are women in the league that deserve more recognition, it’s just that simple: They deserve more.”
Women athletes dominated headlines and medal podiums last summer in Paris, a trend that has been brewing for the past several Olympics. In 2024, women made up 50% of the athletes at the Games for the first time in history. But the gymnasts and track stars there, who usually get their moment on a Wheaties box once every four years, also started to notice a more sustained interest than before.
Thomas, who was featured heavily in Netflix’s docuseries Sprint in the lead-up to the Games and then went on to win three gold medals in Paris, sees this momentum as fuel (a public health professional, she also works part-time at a volunteer health clinic in Austin, Texas, where she trains). “It’s so helpful and motivating for me to be in an era of sport like this, where women have so much purpose and we’re fighting for so much more than just what’s on the field or the track,” Thomas says. “It’s about making a difference to increase access and equity in our sport. That’s such a great moment to be part of.”
Lee and Chiles embody the change in what it means to be a gymnast today. When Lee was first starting out, she was shocked by how serious competitions were. Strict, abusive coaching styles were all too common, and the athletes were forced into harmfully rigid ideas about their bodies and how they should look. Few gymnasts had careers once they went through puberty. “Being a gymnast in a lot of people’s eyes was a white girl with a ponytail and I didn’t look like any of them,” says Chiles.
In the past decade, however, national team members have bravely spoken out about the abusive coaching and environments they experienced, and the U.S. team has gotten older, stronger, healthier and more competitive. “I’m definitely stronger now than I was when I was younger,” Chiles says. “And I’ve accepted the fact it’s O.K. to be older in this sport.” Fans certainly have embraced that. At the Paris Games Lee says she felt like a rock star. “It was just the best feeling in the world to see that people actually cared about it,” she says.
The freedom, joy, and support enjoyed by today’s U.S. gymnasts has undeniably made the sport more fun to watch, and Lee wants that for all women athletes. “I feel like right now women are dominating in sports,” she says. “It’s such an amazing thing to see and it’s so exciting to watch. I feel like it can only get better from here.”
BALTIMORE — UMBC Baseball coach Liam Bowen announced the Retrievers 2026 schedule on Monday afternoon. The 52-game slate features 25 contests at Alumni Field, highlighted by a visit from Maryland on April 7.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL SCHEDULE
The non-conference road schedule features the first trip to Longwood since 2012 to open the season (2/20-2/22), and the first ever meetings with Penn (3/7-/3/8) and Florida Atlantic (3/13-3/15).
After the Longwood series, home Opening Day at Alumni Field will be on February 24 against Georgetown at 3 p.m., followed by a weekend series with Monmouth (2/27-31). UMBC will then play midweeks at George Washington (3/3) and Delaware State (3/4) before heading to Penn. They then return home to face Mount St. Mary’s (3/10), travel to FAU and then host a rematch with Delaware State (3/17).
America East play then begins as the Dawgs host Maine (3/20-3/22), they then have road tilts Coppin State (3/24) at UAlbany (3/27-29) before closing March by hosting George Washingto (3/31). April opens with a three-game non-conference home series against Iona (4/2-4/4) followed by the visit from the Terps.
Trips to Binghamton (4/10-4/12) and Georgetown (4/14) are then followed with a four-game homestand against UMass Lowell (4/17-4/19) and Towson (4/21). The Retrievers then make the return trip to Maine (4/24-4/26) and head to La Salle (4/28) before returning to Alumni Field to host UAlbany (5/1-5/3) and Coppin State (5/5).
The regular season wraps with trips to Bryant (5/8-5/10) and Towson (5/12), and then NJIT (5/14-5/16) comes to Baltimore for senior weekend.
The America East Tournament begins the following wek in Binghamton. The top six teams qualify, with the top two earning a bye to the double-elimination portion of the bracket.
BRIDGEWATER, NJ – The NEC has announced the 2026 Men’s Volleyball Preseason Coaches’ Poll, that featured the Manhattan Jaspers placing fifth, per release on Tuesday afternoon.
“I’m excited to begin competing this weekend, after a semester of hard work with the team,” said Head Coach Chris Schortgen.
“We have a competitive schedule ahead of us full of opportunity and I know our guys will make the most of these opportunities.”
The Jaspers open their stint as Associate Members of the NEC with a 15-squad roster, which includes 12 freshmen, and will be immediately eligible to compete in the 2026 NEC Men’s Volleyball Championship come the end of April.
Full List:
T1. Daemen (3)
T1: Saint Francis (2)
3. LIU (1)
4. FDU (1)
5. Manhattan
6. University of Maryland Eastern Shore
7. D’Youville
This season, the Jaspers have packed in a schedule that features teams like Penn State, and Loyola Chicago, while playing home matches against Roosevelt, and conference foes such as LIU, Saint Francis University, and FDU to open its Draddy Gymnasium residency.
The Men’s Volleyball program will open its first ever season on Saturday, January 10, when the Jaspers visit the Nittany Lions of Penn State for a 3 p.m. start in State College. The contest will be viewable on Big Ten Network Plus with a paid subscription.
VESTAL, N.Y. – The Binghamton Division of Athletics has announced that Lori Gleason has been named its new Head Sports Performance Coach. Having served as an assistant and associate sport performance coach on the staff since 2006, she was promoted to the head job effective Jan. 2.
Gleason will oversee the sports performance programming for all 21 Bearcat athletic programs. In this role, she will lead two assistant sports performance coaches and collaborate closely with team coaches and student-athletes to establish and uphold training programs and performance standards that support continued growth and development of student-athletes.
“Lori has a long-standing reputation as a leader and mentor whose impact extends well beyond the weight room,” Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Sports Medicine & Performance Kara Gorgos said. “Her elevation to Head Sports Performance Coach is a testament to her dedication to Binghamton Athletics and her proven ability to continue raising the performance standards of our student-athletes. We are excited for the continued evolution and advancement of our sports performance program under Lori’s leadership.”
“I would like to thank Binghamton University, Director of Athletics Eugene Marshall Jr, the search committee, and my supervisor Kara Gorgos for this incredible opportunity to move into the role of Head Sports Performance Coach,” Gleason said. “Also, for the continuous support I have been given, I would like to thank my family and coworkers/coaching staff. I am very excited and look forward to growing our area, as well as collaborating with our staff as we all work together to achieve what is most important for our student athletes to be successful in their sport and performance.”
Since being hired as an Assistant Sports Performance Coach in 2006, Gleason has worked directly with seven of the Bearcat athletic programs, six of which have captured America East team championships during her tenure. In addition, Gleason has worked with a track & field program that has produced one NCAA champion as well as seven other All-Americans during that same span.
In 2024, Gleason was elevated to Senior Assistant Sports Performance Coach. Her additional duties included collaborating on the Bearcat teams’ performance programs and injury prevention tactics, establishing a 15+ week Preventive Exercise Plan specifically for ACL injuries and providing mentorship for the Sports Performance interns. In addition, Gleason served as an Athletic Department staff liaison for the Student-Athlete Mental Health Committee.
A 2002 graduate of SUNY Cortland, Gleason went on to earn her Master’s Degree in Applied Exercise Science from Springfield College in 2006. She served as both an intern and graduate assistant strength coach during her years at Springfield.
TRANSACTION
Binghamton University – Lori Gleason named Head Sports Performance Coach
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – UC Santa Barbara has officially announced their meet schedule for the upcoming 2026 outdoor season. The calendar features 14 regular-season meets during the spring, 13 of which will be held across California, featuring three home meets. Following the regular season, the Gauchos will compete at the Big West Championships and the postseason continues into June with the NCAA West Preliminary Round and the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
The season will kick off with two home meets on Pauley Track, featuring the two-day Sam Adams Combined Events on March 5 and 6, followed by the Gaucho Relays on March 7.
The Gauchos will compete in two more meets for the remainder of March, including the Westmont Dual on March 13 to the neighboring Westmont College. Their next stop will be at the Jim Bush Legends Meet, hosted by UCLA on March 28.
On the first weekend of April, UCSB will compete in three separate meets, featuring the Stanford Invite and Mike Fanelli Distance Carnival in the Bay Area, as well as the Triton Invite in San Diego. Each meet will be two days, held on April 3 and 4.
Up next, the UCSB heptathletes and decathletes will take to the track at the Bryan Clay Multi April 9 and 10, overlapping with the Challenge Cup on April 10.
Santa Barbara will be featured in three different meets the following weekend, marking their return to Azusa Pacific from April 16 to 18 for the Bryan Clay Invite. The Guachos will also be seen in action at the Long Beach Invite hosted by Long Beach State April 17 and 18, as well as at the renowned Mt. Sac Relays at Hilmer Lodge Stadium April 16 to 18.
The Gauchos will take to their home track one last time before entering the postseason at the UCSB Invite, the two-day meet being hosted from April 24 to 25. The following weekend, Santa Barbara will travel to the Northeast, where they will compete at the prestigious Penn Relays hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.
UC Santa Barbara’s postseason opens up with the Big West Multi Championships held on May 8 to 9 at Anteater Stadium in Irvine, Calif., then the remainder of the championships meet schedule will fill up two action-packed days of competition May 15 and 16 at Long Beach State.
Based on their performance throughout the postseason, the Gauchos have the chance to move on to the NCAA West Prelims hosted by the University of Arkansas, May 27 through 30. The NCAA National Championships will be held June 10 through 13 in Eugene, Ore.
Jan. 6, 2026, 12:18 p.m. MT
Three El Paso high school volleyball players have been named to the Texas Sports Writers Association All-State volleyball team for the recently completed 2025 season.
- Chapin junior outside hitter Zoeh Cereceres was named Honorable Mention All-State in Class 5A. This past season, she had 501 kills, 43 aces, 35 blocks and 191 digs. Cereceres helped Chapin to the District 1-5A title and one playoff victory.
- Eastlake senior middle blocker Mia Carrasco was named Honorable Mention All-State in Class 6A. Carrasco finished the 2025 season with 240 kills and 115 blocks. Carrasco helped the Falcons to a District 1-6A title and two playoff wins.
- Eastlake freshman outside hitter Giselle Gandara was named Honorable Mention All-State in Class 6A. Gandara finished the season with 427 kills, 378 digs and 58 blocks. Gandara was also named a Freshman All-American in Class 6A by MaxPreps after the recently completed season.
Felix F. Chavez can be reached@fchavez@elpasotimes.com; @Fchavezeptimes on X
Columbia, SC. – The Wildcats will participate in their second indoor meet of the season as they begin 2026 at the Gamecock Opener. The meet takes place on Saturday, January 10 at the Carolina Indoor Track & Field Complex.
Bethune-Cookman completed their first indoor meet of the season at the Birmingham Indoor Icebreaker as five Wildcat participants finished in the top ten of their respective events.
Freshman Carlos Moore had the highest finish, picking up third in the men’s triple jump with a 45-11.25. Moore also finished eight in the men’s long jump with a 22-00.75
Sophomore Nyidjah Ives picked up ninth place in the women’s 800m run with a time of 2:28.37.
Sophomore Tyler Washington finished seventh in the men’s shot put with 13.97m.
Fellow Sophomore Ashton Matthews was tenth in the men’s high jump with a 6-02.75
South Carolina hosts the event at the Carolina Track & Field Complex. The venue features a banked six-lane 200m Mondo track, a separate throws area, two pole vault areas, two jumps runways, and two high jump areas along with an eight-lane 60m straight track on the infield.
Saturday’s meet is set to begin at 10 a.m., with men’s high jump and women’s pole vault.
Running events will begin at 11 a.m. and run through 7:10 p.m., concluding with 4 x 400s.
The full schedule can be found here.
Follow Bethune-Cookman Track & Field Cross Country on Twitter (@BCUTrackXC) and Instagram (BCUXCTF) for all of the latest news and updates. For all Bethune-Cookman Athletics news, follow us on Twitter (@BCUAthletics), Instagram (@BCU_Athletics) and www.bcuathletics.com.
–#HailWildcats–
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